India, Feb. 18 -- Pune With Maharashtra, including Pune, experiencing significantly above normal temperatures since January this year, there has been a considerable rise in forest fire incidents in the state. As per the Forest Survey of India's (FSI's) forest fire monitoring data, Maharashtra recorded 97 large forest fire incidents from January till date with at least 11 out of the forest fire incidents reported in the last 24 hours still in active mode. Given that the summer season is approaching and there is dry grass, such incidents are likely to increase in the coming days, forest officials said.

Deepak Pawar, assistant conservator of forests (ACF), Pune forest department, said, "Speaking about Pune, the maximum alerts we got from th...